The invention disclosed relates to an apparatus and a method for the automatic separation of stacked sheets of large format paper into reams, designed for use in applications where the sheets are counted off previously into reams, using markers.
In the art field embracing the manufacture of paper in reams of large format sheets for designers, artists etc., a problem typically encountered with the wrapping operation is that of how the stack of single sheets is separated into reams.
Reams destined for wrapping by the machine are discharged by the sheeter onto a pallet in a simple stack of single sheets; the pallet is placed on an elevator platform which ascends automatically every time the operator removes a ream, in such way that handling occurs at an unvarying height.
Substantially two basic conventional methods are used for separating the stack of sheets into reams.
The first such method makes use of an instrument similar to a gage, with two measuring arms, one of which fixed and provided with a locator, the other mobile and fitted with a blade designed to penetrate between adjacent sheets. The operator calculates the depth of the ream on the basis of the number and the thickness of the single sheets, then, offering the fixed locating arm to the top sheet, slides the gage forward to the point where the blade inserts between two sheets at the selected depth, and thus separates the ream from the remainder of the stack beneath.
In the second method, the stack of sheets from which the reams are formed is prepared by a machine that counts off the sheets and interposes a marker between one sheet and the next each time the count is completed; the marker is nothing other than a piece of paper or some other material, colored or otherwise, that protrudes from the stack, and the operator simply has to lift off the sheets that lie above the marker and supply them to the wrapping machine.
This second method is extremely precise, though the markers do not always fall in the same position, a drawback attributable to differences both in the size of sheet being handled, and in the features of the various types of sheeter used in manufacture.
At all events, separation of the stack of sheets into reams, in either of the methods thus described, remains a manually-implemented process.
Accordingly, the object of the invention is to provide an apparatus capable of receiving a stack of sheets and separating it into reams automatically.
A further object of the invention is to embody an apparatus that will be capable of achieving this main object in an economical and functional manner.